James Audley († 1369)

James Audley Coat of Arms

Sir James Audley KG (* around 1318; † around 23 August 1369 in Fontenay-le-Comte , Bas-Poitou ) was an English military man. He is considered an outstanding example of a knight of the 14th century, the chronicler Froissart calls him one of the heroes of the Battle of Poitiers .

origin

James Audley was the illegitimate son of Sir James Audley and his lover Eve de Clavering , with whom he had a long relationship after 1314. He is often confused with his cousin James Audley, 3rd Baron Audley of Heleigh , but there were also other people with the name James Audley.

Military in the Hundred Years War

Rise in the service of the Black Prince

When Audley's father died in 1334, his uncle Hugh de Audley inherited his father's possessions. since James was considered illegitimate. After the death of his paternal grandmother Isolt de Mortimer in 1338, however, he inherited their Eastington estate in Gloucestershire . Audley is first mentioned with certainty in June 1346 in the retinue of Edward of Woodstock , the Black Prince , in whose retinue he took part in the campaign to France during the Hundred Years War . He was one of four squires whom the Black Prince knighted before the Battle of Crécy . After the English victory, he took part in the protracted but ultimately successful siege of Calais . As a follower of the Black Prince, he was one of the founding members of the Order of the Garter . Whether he took part in the naval battle of Winchelsea in 1350 and in the relief of Saint-Jean-d'Angély in 1351 is disputed. In June 1351 he was part of the Black Prince's entourage when he visited London. On December 31, 1353 he took part in a tournament in Eltham with Sir John Chandos , where he was rewarded with armor.

Hero of the Battle of Poitiers and fought until the Peace of Brétigny

Audley had already been rewarded for his services with an annual pension of £ 80 when he accompanied the Black Prince to Bordeaux in 1355 . In the autumn of that year he was part of the English army, which made a Chevauchée as far as Narbonne . He undertook together with Chandos an advance against the Count Jean of Armagnac . In early 1356 he led raids from Moissac into the Agenais , during which he conquered the nearby Castelsagrat . When the Black Prince carried out his Chevauchée through western France in 1356, Audley and Chandos were part of the prince's close entourage. On August 28, 1356, they beat a mercenary company under Philippe de Chambly at Vierzon . When the English army was provided by the superior French army at Poitiers , he was one of the English leaders who initially wanted to avoid a battle. In the following Battle of Poitiers , however, he fought on the front lines and was seriously wounded. The Black Prince is said to have personally taken care of the treatment of his injuries. The annual pension of £ 400 which the Black Prince granted him from the income of the ore mines in South West England in December 1356, Audley magnanimously passed on to his four squires. In addition, he was later granted 600 Écu from the customs income of Marmande , in addition he was Seigneur of the Oléron . After his recovery, he probably took part in the siege of Rennes in Brittany in 1357 . From 1359 to 1360 he took part in the English campaign to Reims . He made again together with Chandos forays into the region around Soissons . They captured the castle of La Ferté-sous-Jouarre , which they used as a base for further advances. On October 24, 1360, he testified in Calais with the Peace of Brétigny and the release of the French King John II, who had been captured near Poitiers .

Further fighting in Brittany and France

Although he stayed in France until 1361, he was made Constable of Gloucester Castle in 1360 . After a brief visit to England in 1361, he returned to south-west France with the Black Prince in 1362. In April 1363 he was again in England, after which he probably stayed in France until his death. On February 26, 1364 Audley belonged again to the entourage of the Black Prince when he tried unsuccessfully in Poitiers to mediate between Jean de Montfort and Karl von Blois , the candidates for the title Duke of Brittany . When the Black Prince undertook a campaign to Spain in the autumn of 1366 to support Peter I of Castile against Henry of Trastamara , Audley stayed behind as governor of Guyenne . When the war with France broke out again in 1369, Audley became the prince's deputy in the Poitou and Limousin . He made Chevauchées in the Berry and in the Touraine , before he besieged La Roche-sur-Yon in Bas-Poitou together with Edmund, Earl of Cambridge . After conquering the city, Audley, presumably already ill, retired to Fontenay-le-Comte , where he died. As a model knight celebrated by friends and foes, he was buried in an elaborate funeral in the Cathedral of Poitiers . His tomb was destroyed in 1562.

Audley had married Margaret Bereford , who had died before April 1363. The marriage had remained childless.

literature

• John A. Wagner: Encyclopedia of the Hundred Years War . Greenwood, Westport 2006. ISBN 0-313-32736-X , pp. 36-37

Web links

• Sir James Audley on thepeerage.com , accessed April 15, 2016.
• Michael Jones: Audley, Sir James (c.1318-1369). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004

Individual evidence

1. ^ Stratton Audley: History. Retrieved April 18, 2016 . 
2. ^ The Medieval Combat Society: James Audley. Retrieved April 18, 2016 .